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Melody's avatar

I relate to so much of this, especially the negative shame. I so often think of Martin Luther's idea about sin as incurvatus in se, man turned in on himself, and how those "sin management" things you mentioned are often ways to stay curved in toward ourselves, away from others and God. Very Screwtape-y, now that I think about it!

Confession has become a regular part of my prayer life as an Anglican, and I love how Anglican prayer places it first (gets it out of the way, so the rest of the time I can focus on God with "a quiet mind") and always follows swiftly with God's forgiveness and living a godly life. Totally changed how I feel about sin: less stuck in negative shame spirals, more quickly recognizing and acknowledging, and WAY easier to own up to others and say sorry. I was introduced to Earley's work when we started attending an Anglican church, and it was so formative as we joined this tradition. I love that, even when I'm doing morning prayer alone, confession is spoken as "we," so it encompasses individual and corporate dimensions, even all of groaning creation.

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Ken Ferry's avatar

Having started this life on the pool deck before wading into the "more progressive waters" with my family as a young child, my adult self finds its comfort in the more Evangelical end of the pool. And now having already lived well more than half of my earthly life, I begin to realize that this exchanging of places that sometimes occurs across our denominations can be a healthy thing as long as we don't completely eradicate from our memories the things we learned elsewhere. The things that became our traditions began as useful tools toward our spiritual development before taking on a life of their own, and those of us who have "changed sides" now find ourselves glancing back to see value in the things we fled. So, our denominational differences appear, at least to me, to be God's way of showing us that none of us will ever have it all figured out - at least not on this side of glory - and that we need to continue to look across the fences we construct for truths we may find a bit uncomfortable.

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